Least expensive IB automated execution platform

I am trying to find the least expensive platform for fully automated trading with IB. So far, I've come up with the following:

1. Used version of Tradestation 2000i ~$150 . (Yahoo IM me if you are selling)
2. Real time data from IB, via hyperserver or metaserver ~free to $10/mo
3. Automated execution via Tradebolt, Dynaorder or TraderAssistant ~ ?free to $250

I am going to start by trading QQQ or SPY with trend following systems. I expect to hold positions for days to weeks, though at some point I may implement systems that hold these for hours to days. I am not looking to trade minute to minute, so I am not obsessed with a few seconds here or there in data lag. I do wonder how to fill-in missing data, should the IB connection temporarily go down.

Does anyone else trade with this set up? Can anyone foresee any potential problems in running this set up? Ideally, I want to turn it loose completely hands free and just check in a few times a day to see if any signals have been generated.

At some point, I would like to trade futures with this set up, once again holding days to weeks or at least hours to days. Does IB stream real time futures data?